In rural Northumberland an elegant stone column rises in a field. A passer-by would guess it to be an eighteenth century ornament, and they would be right: work to erect it was completed in 1786. But it was not built in Northumberland, where it has stood for a mere century. The monument actually started its life at Felbridge in Surrey, some 350 miles to the south.

The monument was commissioned by James Evelyn (1718-1793) of Felbridge Place, in Surrey, from the architect Sir John Soane, whose original designs show a fluted column. This was rejected in favour of a plain column, but this tweak to the design would still keep the stonemason busy: the shaft carries a Latin eulogy to Evelyn’s parents, and is also inscribed with the 13 verses of Joseph Addison’s Hymn to Gratitude — or rather 14 verses as the penultimate verse was added to Addison’s original. The story goes that a local clergyman felt 13 verses was inappropriate and added one of his own. The drum is carved with the motto Manners Makyth Man and is encircled by a snake swallowing its own tail, representing eternity. Just two years after its completion The Honorable John Byng passed by and noted the ‘extraordinary monumental obelisk’.

The serpent gave rise to the local legend that the monument was erected to mark the spot where two people and a horse were killed by an enormous snake. A local reporter called the story ‘absurd’, and was bewildered that it was ‘firmly believed in by many local people’

The Felbridge Place estate changed hands a number of times after Evelyn’s death. In 1924 it was on the market once more, with the ‘memorial column’ included in the deal. A year later a diarist in a local paper wrote that the column was deteriorating rapidly, and that if something wasn’t done soon the top of the ‘grand piece of stonework’ would come ‘crashing down’. He ended with a question: ‘will not the owner of the estate show sufficient interest to have it repaired?’ In short, no, they wouldn’t, as the land was destined for lucrative housing development.

But someone who did show an interest was Stephen Aitchison (1863-1942) who had recently bought and restored Lemmington Hall, near Alnwick in Northumberland. History does not seem to record how Aitchison learned about the monument, but he purchased it and the plot of land on which it stood. The monument was dismantled in February 1927, and a local paper reported that ‘while deeply regretting that there was so little public-spiritedness in the village of Felbridge that this beautiful obelisk was not acquired and preserved in situ, it is gratifying to know that it is not to be demolished but is to grace northern instead of southern England’.

The dismantled monument was then moved north to be re-erected as an object in the park at Lemmington. Writing in Country Life in 1978, Margaret Hudson states that the work was completed in 1928 at a cost of £1,470.

It is appropriate that Aitchison was erecting a monument to gratitude in 1928, for the New Year Honours list of that year bestowed upon him a knighthood (he would be created a baronet in 1938). Although some of the lettering on the monument was recut after it was moved north, the family appear to have added no words of their own.

And now a confession: the Flâneuse did not see the column at close quarters as the field in which it stands was home to a herd of boisterous beasts. Hence the slightly blurry image above, taken from the edge of the field. But the excellent Geograph website saved the day with this image:

Meanwhile, the Uncouth Companion was earning his wings as a trainee drone pilot:

In 1995 Felbridge Parish Council began to consider how to mark the Millennium. One suggestion was that the column be returned to its original home. It is unlikely that anyone took this suggestion very seriously, as the cost would have been enormous (even assuming that the then owner had agreed to part with it). Unsurprisingly, the column (grade II*) remains in its northern home.

And as if the lovely column wasn’t treat enough, after viewing the column you can turn and look to Lemmington Branch, a castellated hilltop folly (history yet to be investigated) now converted into a very smart house.

When James Evelyn, the original builder of the monument, wasn’t commissioning fine monuments he was carrying out good works. As well as founding a village school he established the splendidly named Beef and Faggot Charity which ensured that the poorer members of his local community were cared for. There’s an account of the charity, which continues today, here.

You can read the whole of the hymn featured on the column here.

Lemmington Hall was leased for many years to a convent, but was sold by the Aitchison family early this century. It has recently been renovated as a wedding venue.

Thank you for reading. Comments and thoughts are always welcome – scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch.

A short distance from Rothley Castle, on land which was once part of the Wallington Hall estate near Morpeth, is a sham fort known today as Codger Fort. It was built as an eye-catcher by Sir Walter Calverley Blackett in around 1770 as part of a programme of improvements at Rothley.

Rothley Castle (featured here last week, see link below if you missed it) was erected in 1746-47, and the landscape was further embellished with the creation of Rothley Lake in the 1760s. Sir Walter took delivery of a boat to sail on the lake in 1768, and at around the same date he was planning an adjoining piece of water to be known as Rothley Low Lake, with a sham fort on high ground above it.

This ornament was to be erected on the rocky outcrop called ‘Cadjah Crag’, high above the two lakes (to thwart researchers Cadjah is also recorded as Codjah, Codger, Codgy and Cadgey before Codger became the accepted name in the 19th century). The ‘intended fort’ was discussed in a letter in March 1770, when Sir Walter’s instructions were that no work should begin until Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s plan for the head of the new lake had been executed in the summer of that year. In 1772 five brass cannon were delivered to the folly which were to be fired in celebration when work on the lake was complete.

A drawing for the fort survives in the collection at Wallington Hall, dated September 1769. It is attributed to Thomas Wright of Durham (1711-1786) and shows that a tower was originally planned to complete the fort, but does not appear to have been executed.

The historian William Hutchinson described the ‘stupendous cliff’, which he called ‘Codgey Crag’, in his A View of Northumberland published in 1778, but having already failed to appreciate nearby Rothley Castle, he dismissed the fort as just ‘another uncouth ornament’.

In around 1860 the surveyors working on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map were noting significant landmarks for inclusion on the maps. Part of their work involved ascertaining the history of such structures, and they were told that ‘Codger Castle’ had been ‘erected at the period of the Scotch Rebellion of 1745 to scare the Enemy’. Whilst the Jacobite uprising had indeed caused concern at Wallington, the fort was built principally as an ornament some 25 years later (although with Northumberland’s history of border skirmishes a visible deterrent to any future invaders from the north may have been a secondary consideration).

In August 1893 a Sunday school party was ‘marched’ to the folly ‘where a repast of milk and buns was served’. Decades later the Flâneuse too picnicked on the spot during a Girl Guide hike, and went home desperate to learn more about it. That passion for follies endures.

The grade II listed folly is in the care of the National Trust, but it is not on a public right of way. It is best viewed when travelling south towards Rothley on the B6342.

You can find the post on Rothley Castle here https://thefollyflaneuse.com/rothley-castle-rothley-northumberland/

Wallington Hall’s website is here  https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/north-east/wallington

The Flâneuse is always delighted to receive your thoughts or comments. Scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

In the middle of the 18th century Wallington Hall, west of Morpeth in Northumberland, was the seat of Sir Walter Calverley Blackett. Like many men of his time, he remodelled his park and introduced fashionable landscape features. On Rothley Crags, a windswept outcrop of rock north of Wallington Hall, he erected a sham castle which served as a distant eye-catcher from the house.

‘Rothley Tower’ was built for Sir Walter (1707-1777) in 1746-47 as the centrepiece of the newly-walled Rothley deer park. A central tower was linked by curtain walls to two smaller turrets, all with battlements and gothic detailing. The stonemasons were John Codling and George Brown, whose famed brother Lancelot (aka Capability) gave advice to Sir Walter, although it is sadly little-documented. A plan in the collection at Wallington Hall suggests that a more ambitious scheme, with a spire on the central tower and further turrets, was initially planned but later abandoned. The Duchess of Northumberland, a careful recorder of the country houses she visited, noted in her diaries that the architect was Daniel Garrett (?-1753) , and in 1775 the Duchess had a sketch taken for her collection:

As well as being an eye-catcher from Wallington Hall and a picnic destination, the folly might also have had a defensive purpose. Built immediately after the Jacobite uprising had put the northern counties of England on high alert for invading armies of Scots, the tower was equipped with 6 brass guns in 1748, and was ready to deter the enemy if required.

With the coming of more peaceful times, the Castle (as it is named on a 1777 estate plan) became purely decorative in purpose. A traveller who saw the folly in 1766 was told it was intended to be an ‘object’ in the landscape, a sea-mark and a deer-shelter, the park at that date being ‘full of deer and game’. The natural historian John Wallis wrote in 1769 that the entrance was flanked by two ‘jaw-bones of a Whale’, over seventeen feet tall, and the creature’s vast shoulder blades were also on display.

In a county rich in medieval strongholds Blackett clearly wished people to believe they were looking at a genuine fortification, and the local poet Thomas Oliver suggested as much in ‘On a View of Roadley Castle…’, written before 1777:

Upon its airy summit high,
An antique tower appears,
Who to the stranger passing by,
Seems aged a thousand years.

The historian William Hutchinson was fooled when he visited in 1778. After missing the ‘proper road’ he was forced to climb a fence and clamber up the steep crag only to find that the ‘object of [his] anxious curiosity’ was ‘no other than an ornamental structure’. But he did at least concede that the situation was ‘romantick’. In the central tower were stone tables and chairs of rude form, and the battlements gave a view to the sea and Rothley Lake. Hutchinson also noted the statuary at the folly, which he described as ‘huge heads of griffins’ and ‘two preposterous effigies, representative of no known dress, personage or people’.

The origin of the two stone figures (called Caesar and Pompey in Oliver’s poem) is not known, but two degraded torsos that remain in the gardens today may be remnants of the ‘preposterous effigies’.

The griffins are easier to identify, and came from a London gate that was pulled down in 1761. Bishopsgate was once topped by the ‘city arms supported by dragons’, and these are the 4 ‘griffins’ that once adorned Rothley Castle, but can now be found close to Wallington Hall. The story goes that Sir Walter purchased a quantity of stone from the demolition of Bishopsgate and Aldersgate, and had it brought north by sea as ballast in his colliers that were empty on the return trip to Northumberland.

Eneas Mackenzie produced an updated history of the county in 1825. He acknowledged that Hutchinson had been in ‘peevish humour’ when he wrote so disparagingly of the sham castle, but repeated some of the earlier writer’s description to illustrate how things had by then changed at Rothley: soon after Sir Walter’s death in 1777 his heir removed the deer and put the parkland ‘under cultivation’. The Northumberland historian, Rev. John Hodgson, described the area in 1827 and by then Rothley Castle was ‘neglected’ and Hodgson accused travellers and local youths of vandalising the statues.

This accounts for the removal of the statuary to the grounds of Wallington Hall. The griffin heads were moved to woods on the estate in the nineteenth century, and then in around 1929 to the lawn in front of Wallington Hall, where they can be seen today (their moss-covered wings can be found in another part of the garden). Their sudden appearance as one rounds a corner remains, as Barbara Jones wrote in her research notes, ‘very startling’.

In the 19th century the family continued to visit Rothley Park and the Wallington collection has sketches taken, and botanical specimens collected, on visits to the castle. The park was used for fox hunting, with the two follies making useful landmarks. Rothley had also become a popular destination for walkers and for excursionists on the newly-arrived Wansbeck Railway (axed in the 1950s, but still walkable in parts and known affectionately as the ‘Wannie Line’). Individual picnic parties were politely requested to apply for permission to visit the crags ten days in advance, or tourists could join an organised trip with tea and music:

A little over a century after it was built the origins of the folly had been forgotten. The surveyors working on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey maps were told the romantic tale that it was ‘used to shelter cattle in troublous times’.

Happily the folly, described in 1902 as ‘the product of the questionable taste of the time of the Georges’, survived the vagaries of fashion and was consolidated as a romantic ruin in the first decade of this century. There are walks across fields to the castle, and a platform in the central tower gives wonderful views across the surrounding countryside. Having approached the folly under blue skies the weather changed rapidly, and the Flâneuse decided it was time to retreat before she was blown off the crags.

Wallington Hall and Rothley Castle (grade II*) are both in the care of the National Trust. Check an OS map for the footpaths to Rothley Castle https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/north-east/wallington

The Flâneuse first visited Rothley Castle whilst at Girl Guide camp in the area, and an obsession was born. She has revisited many times, often in the august company of experts Harry Beamish and Nick Owen, who are thanked for sharing their knowledge of the Wallington estate.

Your comments and thoughts are always most welcome. The comments box is at the foot of the page if you’d like to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

In 1138 Newminster Abbey was established close to the River Wansbeck on the edge of Morpeth, Northumberland. The first inhabitants were Cistercian monks from Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire, who remained until the abbey’s dissolution in 1537. By the 19th century little could be seen apart from scattered masonry and bumps in the ground. Early in the 20th century parts were rebuilt as a grand garden ornament and tourist attraction, with perhaps not quite the academic rigour one might expect today.

In 1912 a 25 acre parcel of land, which included Newminster Abbey and a house called Spring Hill, was bought by George Renwick. Renwick (1850-1931) was a wealthy ship-owner who had entered politics and sat for various Newcastle seats up until 1922. He was created a baronet in 1921.

Renwick extended Spring Hill, which looked down to the site of the ancient Newminster Abbey (it was later renamed Newminster Abbey House), and began to excavate the abbey ruins, where for at least a century little had been visible above ground.

The one visible structure was this arch, noted in the early 19th century as the ‘last remaining arch of Newminster Abbey’.

Renwick’s excavations revealed artefacts, burial sites and large quantities of masonry hidden under the earth and rubble. A hoard of silver coins dating from the 11th and 12th centuries was discovered and donated to the British Museum in 1926. Renwick dug up the genuine fragments and used them, like a giant mediaeval Lego set, to create ‘beautiful arcading’.

Sir George invited the members of Morpeth Town Council to his home to see the work, and explained that he hoped that the ‘long hidden portions of the once famous Abbey’ might attract visitors to the town.

Residents were granted free access on condition that they used the ‘proper footpath’, and supported him in protecting the abbey ruins from damage and destruction. The picturesque reassembled ruins became the subject of many a picture postcard.

At that date no-one seems to have been particularly concerned that the ancient remains were being reconstructed as a garden ornament, although one can read between the lines of the carefully worded report that ‘extensive amateur excavation and rebuilding has taken place’.

Sadly, there is no public access to the overgrown grade II listed ruins for the townsperson or tourist of today. The site is privately-owned and hidden from view by trees and shrubs.

If you would like to share any thoughts please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page. To receive a folly story in your inbox each Saturday, please click the subscribe tab. Thank you for reading.

In the furthest reaches of Northumberland, close to the Scottish border, stands the romantic ruin of an ancient family seat. This is not a particularly unusual sight in this region of skirmishes and sackings, so why has this particular building become known as a folly? It is of course an elegant eye-catcher, seen over the single span of the ancient bridge over the river Till, but there is more to the story, and as Barbara Jones wrote, Twizel Castle falls into the ‘foolishness-type folly’ category – a picturesque but purposeless palace.

In 1761 Francis Blake (1709-1780), later Sir Francis Blake when he was given a baronetcy in 1774, commissioned the local mason James Nisbet (?-1781)  to repair and enlarge the ‘old house’. Nisbet was tasked with ‘preserving the Gothic form and taste’ and the new house must have been largely complete by 1769 when Armstrong’s map of Northumberland shows a house with circular corner towers. A more detailed view was presented in this engraving dated 1775 (above). A year later Twizel Castle (sometimes Twisel) was described as a comfortable seat with ‘the circular corners affording a great command of prospect’.

A visiting clergyman had hinted in 1761 that the planned new house was perhaps not quite palatial enough for its fine lofty situation, and it seems that the next generation of the family agreed. Blake’s son, also Francis (c.1737-1818), succeeded as the 2nd baronet in 1780, and began a huge project to surround his father’s house with a vast castellated carapace which grew and grew.

A kitchen garden was created and the whole was surrounded by a Brownian landscape (exact date unknown) embellished with clumps and specimen trees, perimeter belts of planting and a circuit ride which took in views of the rivers Till and Tweed.

After the death of the 3rd baronet in 1860 the baronetcy became extinct and the estate was inherited by Captain Francis Blake (1832-1861). After his early death his wife, Eleanor, controlled the estate until the coming of age of their eldest son, Francis Douglas Blake (1856-1940, created a baronet in 1907). After coming of age Blake took the decision to settle on his adjoining Tillmouth estate. Charles Barry junior was called in for advice, and the decision was taken not only to pull down Twizel Castle (which Barry thought ‘ugly’), but also to demolish the mansion at Tillmouth and build a new house.

The local community was alarmed to hear that Twizel Castle would cease to exist and asked Blake to think again. Eventually he agreed to leave standing ‘the remains of the ancient castle that still stood within the walls of the modern building’. In 1882 the Berwickshire News & General Advertiser reported that ‘the two residences are now being taken down’ and continued that whilst Twizel Castle ‘was never of any practical use to its owners, and was never even completely finished […] its removal will be witnessed with great regret’.

Blake kept his word, and the ancient walls, complete with the 3rd baronet’s 18th century gothic adornments, were left standing as a prominent feature in the landscape. Nature soon took control and by the time Barbara Jones found it when researching for the 2nd edition of Follies & Grottoes (1974) everything was ‘drowned in encroaching, clambering and piled-up green’ and she could only conclude ‘I think it has round towers’.

Today the vegetation is kept at bay and a rather enticing public footpath allows access up to the ruin…

Thank you for reading. Please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page to share any thoughts or further information. If you would like to receive a folly story in your inbox every weekend please click the subscribe tab.

North Seaton Hall stood in the hamlet of the same name, just inland from Newbiggin by the Sea on the Northumberland coast. The house and ancillary buildings were demolished in the 1960s, and the land developed for housing: only the road called ‘Summerhouse Lane’ gives a clue to a fascinating feature which once ornamented the grounds.

The hall, seat of the Watson family, was described as newly built in 1730. It is shown on Armstrong’s 1769 map of Northumberland, and alongside it stands what looks like a substantial tower or summerhouse. At that date the hall was home to Stephen and Dorothy Watson and their family. Little is known of the Summerhouse’s early history,  but it was probably used as a banqueting house and belvedere to take advantage of the views to the coast.

The Summerhouse may have had a less frivolous purpose at a time when Britain feared invasion by the French. Stephen and Dorothy’s son, William Watson (1751-1830), supervised the ‘Beacon man’ at Newbiggin. His role was to keep a lookout and be ready to light a warning beacon should the French fleet be spotted. In November 1796, with invasion thought imminent, Watson charged him to be ‘more than usually attentive and give immediate notice if anything extraordinary appears at Sea’. Watson’s summerhouse would probably have been equipped with a telescope so that he too could survey the North Sea: the building was known locally as ‘the Lookout’.

It is not known who designed the mansion or the quirky Summerhouse with its pretty gothic glazing in the windows (varying on each storey), pierced battlements and curved roof giving just a nod to chinoiserie. Local architect John Dobson has been suggested, and his daughter Mary wrote a memoir of her father in which she states that the first house he designed was at ‘North Seaton’ for J. Nicholson Esq. in 1813. Many texts repeat this attribution, but in 1813 North Seaton Hall was the established seat of the Watsons, so it would seem that Nicholson’s new house was elsewhere. Dobson may however have worked at North Seaton at a later date: the drawing featured here was part of a collection that included many of Dobson’s houses in Northumberland, and so it may record recent remodelling of the house and/or summerhouse. Sadly few records from Dobson’s practice survive to provide answers.

By the middle of the 19th century the house was described as an ‘elegant mansion […] surrounded by pleasing scenery’. The 25″ Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 1896, shows the tower with its curious, charming, meandering external staircase, as also seen in old photographs. Although sometimes described as a ‘lodge’, this map makes it clear that it was a garden feature and did not, at that date, sit on the drive.

The Watsons left the estate in the middle of the 19th century, and there were then a number of owners and tenants. In 1930 the hall was converted into a Migration Training Hostel where young men were given tuition for work they might do overseas. Almost immediately the demand for emigrants dried up, so the hall was then used as a holiday centre before the contents were sold in 1933. Local newspaper Blyth News was saddened at this ‘chequered history’ and was at a loss to know ‘what will transpire next’.

The hall was converted into council apartments after the Second World War, but in 1953 the families were rehoused as the house was badly infested with woodworm. In that same year the decision was taken to demolish the grade II listed hall, although no immediate action was taken. At that date it was thought that the summerhouse  ‘could be retained as a historic building’, but with the house empty the thieves and vandals arrived. In 1954 the County Surveyor reported that the summerhouse was in a poor condition, and that the police were seeking the thieves who had stripped the roof of its lead. Despite it being a scheduled monument (grade II), it was decided that the summerhouse ‘should be demolished in the interests of health and safety’, and the stone retained for use ‘elsewhere’.

Nikolaus Pevsner visited around this date when researching for his Buildings of England volume on Northumberland, which would be published in 1957. His depressing summary was that the hall was ‘very neglected’ but he did note the summerhouse which described as ‘solid early 19C Gothic Revival’. In May 1961 the inevitable (for that period) demolition work began. It was thought too dangerous for the rotted interiors to be dismantled, so the structure was deliberately set on fire, with the local fire brigade tackling the blaze as a training exercise. The remains of the mansion were then pulled down, along with the Summerhouse, and the grounds developed for housing.

Today, the Summerhouse is remembered only in a street name.

Thanks to the team at Northumberland Archives for their help with this story.

Your thoughts are always welcome. Please scroll down to the comments box at the foot of the page to get in touch. Thank you for reading.

Alexander Davison (1750-1829) of Swarland Park, near Felton in Northumberland, erected this obelisk to Nelson in 1807. A closer look at the inscription reveals that he was not only celebrating the admiral’s victory at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, but more particularly their personal friendship. Davison had made a fortune supplying the government during the wars with America and France, but he was later charged with ‘public peculation’ – in other words the court believed he had his hand in the till.

Davison had travelled to Quebec as a young man and grew rich in the shipping trade and as a merchant during the American War of Independence. It was in Canada in 1782 that he first met Horatio Nelson. Davison further increased his wealth during the war with the French via lucrative government contracts to supply goods to the British Navy. After the Battle of the Nile in August 1798 he became Nelson’s agent, negotiating the best prices for the enemy ships captured as prizes. For this he was paid a commission, some of which he spent on producing medals for all the sailors who took part in the action.

A few years earlier he had bought the Swarland estate, between Morpeth and Alnwick in Northumberland. A new Palladian hall had been built only 30 years earlier, attributed to John Carr of York. Here, as the county historian Mackenzie wrote in 1825, Davison ‘greatly added to the appearance of the house and grounds by planting and other improvements which have rendered it one of the most handsome and commodious seats in the county.’

Things began to go wrong from around 1802 when Davison tried to bribe voters at an election, and was later imprisoned. There were also whispers that he was corrupt and embezzling funds, and in 1808 he was convicted and again sent to jail, leading to social and financial ruin.

In 1806 he had been asked to account for the whereabouts of missing subscriptions collected to erect a column in memory of Lord Nelson, but he denied all knowledge of the funds. It may have been in reaction to this that he commissioned this monument on his Northumberland estate, which was completed by the mason Thomas Robson in the spring of 1807.

The plaque on the needle of the obelisk is engraved with Nelson’s famous words ‘England expects every man to do his duty’, and below on the plinth is the simple wording ‘Victory 21 October 1805’.

But the wording on the pedestal makes clear that this is Davison’s personal tribute:

‘Not to commemorate the public virtues and heroic achievements of Nelson which is the duty of England, but to the memory of private friendship this erection is dedicated by Alexander Davison, Swarland Hall’.

In his inscription Davison was criticising the tardiness of the nation in building a national monument to Nelson. Although there had been appeals immediately after Nelson had lost his life at the Battle of Trafalgar, and individuals had commissioned their own tributes across the country, London would not have the column in Trafalgar Square until the early 1840s. Davison chose to build his obelisk in the most visible position on his estate – close by the Great North Road on the principal route between London and Edinburgh, where it was noted by travellers passing by.

Locally, the obelisk was seen by some as Davison’s attempt to detract attention from his crimes by trading on his friendship with the national hero. Local histories record these lines, said to have been penned at the Northumberland Arms in nearby Felton around the time the obelisk was built:

Can honour grace a mean and sordid mind,
Though slightly veiled in courtly ostentation,
Can patriot worth a kindred spirit find,
In the vile swindler of a freeborn nation.

Shall Nelson’s name thy character defend,
Thou public base calumniator,
The libel’s gross to call the Hero friend,
By the convicted public peculator.

The mansion at Swarland was demolished in the first half of the 20th century, after the estate had been dispersed. By the late 1990s, the owners of the land on which the obelisk stands had agreed to transfer it to Felton Parish Council. Working with the neighbouring Newton-on-the-Moor and Swarland Parish Councils, a successful bid was made for Heritage Lottery funding, and the Grade II listed obelisk was restored. It is easily accessible (subject to ongoing improvement works to the A1) on a short stretch of the old A1 east of Swarland.

With apologies for the shadows on the obelisk. The Folly Flâneuse has returned to this site in all seasons, and at all times of day, without every finding the perfect moment for a photograph.

Thank you for reading. Comments are very welcome – please scroll down to the foot of the page to add any thoughts or further information.

On the edge of Alnwick, in Northumberland, stood Swansfield House, an elegant villa that in the late 18th century was home to Henry Collingwood Selby (1748-1839), agent to the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland of Alnwick Castle. Following the lead of his monument-building patrons, he embellished his small estate with a tower, a column, and a curious gothic structure.

In 1789 Selby had married Frances Wilkie, and they settled at Swansfield with its ‘beautiful walks and plantations’. Soon after the couple commissioned a watercolour from the artist John Downman: the work is particularly poignant, for Frances died in childbirth on the first day of August 1790. The child survived, and was named Frances Wilkie Selby in honour of her mother.

Henry Collingwood Selby erected a monument to his wife in St Michaels’ church in Alnwick, and lived on at Swansfield for another five decades. As well as looking after the Duke of Northumberland’s affairs, he was also Clerk of the Peace for Middlesex for more than six decades. His story is not well documented, and the little we know tells that he was kind to the poor of Alnwick, but struck a hard bargain in business – ‘the Duke of Northumberland’s rapacious steward’, was Horace Walpole’s damning description.

On 30 May 1814 the Treaty of Paris was signed, and it seemed that the Napoloeonic Wars were over. Selby decided to erect a monument to commemorate the end of the war with France, and made plans for a column on Camphill, a ‘commanding eminence’ in the parlance of the day, above Swansfield House. Initially it seems he intended the column to be topped by a statue, and he paid 40 Guineas for a ‘fine 6ft Statue of Peace and Victory, with wings, a caduceus, olive branch, cornucopia etc’ from Mrs Coade’s artificial stone manufactory in Lambeth, London. The order also included 4 tablets for inscriptions to ‘fix on the column’ (16 Guineas), and the cutting of the letters for the inscriptions (£21 3s 9d). No architect is recorded, but a strong contender is Newcastle-based David Stephenson (1757-1819); he was architect to the Duke of Northumberland and a regular customer of Mrs Coade.

Three panels praised key figures in the war: Vice Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson for the campaigns at sea and the ‘decisive victory at Trafalgar’; Field Marshall the Duke of Wellington for having ‘vanquished the armies’; and The Right Honourable William Pitt for his statesmanship during the conflict. The fourth praised the ‘persevering and victorious efforts of the British Empire by sea and land’, and of course preserved for posterity the name of Henry Collingwood Selby, erector of the column.

However, by the time the column was ready to be topped with the statue, it had become apparent that Britain would have to wait a little longer for the ‘peace and victory’ represented by the figure. The ‘downfall of Napoleon Buonaparte’ celebrated in the inscription was short-lived – in Spring 1815 he had escaped and was once more governing in Paris. The idea of the terminating statue seems to have been abandoned, and the Camphill Column is topped with a simple ball, as illustrated in William Davison’s A Descriptive and Historical View of Alnwick published in 1822 (above).

But the figure did find a home on the lawn in front of the house, as shown in another engraving in the same book, and this time it was accompanied by an inscription which brought matters triumphantly up to date with the Battle of Waterloo and Napoloeon’s subsequent surrender:

The Pillar on the Camphill
records the events which led to
the first overthrow of NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE
and the Peace of MDCCCXIV,
this Statue is designed to commemorate
the return of NAPOLEON from Elba, his triumphal entry into the capital,
and his resumption of the sovereign power
in France;
the annihilation of his army
by the DUKE OF WELLINGTON
and PRINCE BLUCHER
at the ever-memorable Battle of Waterloo,
his second abdication,
his surrender to the British Fleet,
and his confinement in the island
of St. Helena;
the second capture of Paris,
the second restoration
of the Bourbon monarch,
and the Peace of MDCCCXV

Another landscape feature stood not far away. This was an ‘unfinished tower […] intended as an observatory’, which the late T.L. Adams had begun before his death, and which Selby now owned. In 1815 Selby celebrated allegiances closer to home and inserted a tablet with medallions of the profiles of the Duke and Duchess, and the ducal coronet. These medallions may have been a gift from the Duke and Duchess, who must have ordered a number from the Coade manufactory. Two appear on the Brizlee Tower, and two at Hulne Abbey, both within Hulne Park, part of the Alnwick Castle estate. Others remain unused in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland.

Frustratingly, no views of the tower are known to survive, but again thanks to Davison we know that the inscription on the tower read:

To the memory of his early patrons the most noble HUGH and ELIZABETH DUKE and DUCHESS of NORTHUMBERLAND, not less eminent for their virtues than distinguished by their rank,
this tribute of grateful affection is dedicated by HENRY COLLINGWOOD SELBY MDCCCXV

Swansfield Tower became one of the noted landmarks on the Alnwick skyline, joining the monuments built by the dukes of Northumberland – Ratcheugh Crag, a hilltop eyecatcher (c.1783), Brizlee Tower (c.1781), and the Percy Tenantry Column in the town centre (1816).

Selby died at Swansfield in February 1839 at the age of 91. His estate passed to his great-nephew, who immediately tried to raise an income by letting the tower, by now known as the Stonyhill Tower, as a dwelling. Potential tenants were told that there was a ‘fine view of the sea’, and that it would make a ‘pleasant residence for a small family’. The tower was again offered to let in 1857 and 1861, but soon after it must have been abandoned. By the middle of the 1860s the ‘three storied castellated tower [which] forms a good feature in the surrounding Landscape’ was ‘getting ruinous thru’ neglect’. That deterioration must have continued as it does not appear on the subsequent maps, and is largely forgotten today.

Selby’s descendants sold Swansfield House to the Duke of Northumberland, and it stood until the 1970s when it was demolished, and a new house erected in its place. A substantial part of the former park is now home to the Alnwick Castle Golf Club, and the Grade II* listed column sits in a small copse within the grounds. The fate of the statue to Peace is sadly unknown.

Also surviving is a very curious feature with gothic detailing. Historic England lists the building at Grade II, and suggest it is early 19th century, which fits with Selby’s building spree, but neither they, nor anyone else, seem to be able to give it a history or a purpose. It is a short stretch of wall with gothic detail, echoing decoration seen at nearby Camphill Cottage and on Alnwick Castle. It is not marked or named on OS maps, and for now remains a total mystery.

For Ratcheugh Crag see https://thefollyflaneuse.com/ratcheugh-observatory-longhoughton-northumberland/

For Brizlee Tower see https://thefollyflaneuse.com/brizlee-tower-alnwick-northumberland/

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A prominent feature in the extensive demesne of Alnwick Castle is the Observatory on Ratcheugh Crag, a ‘stupendous and romantic rock’. The building was one of a number of landscape features planned by Hugh and Elizabeth, 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, in the 1770s, but the sham-ruined eye-catcher was not completed until after her death.

Ratcheugh Crag is an outcrop of basalt, and a watercolour in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland, dated to the mid 1770s, shows it bare. The crag, which is visible from Alnwick Castle, was a popular destination for an excursion, and in 1773 the Duke and Duchess noted their decision to build ‘A Ruin at Radsheugh’, and to lay out a new road along the rocky escarpment. The Duchess died in 1776, which may have put plans on hold, but a visitor in autumn 1782 noted an ‘unfinish’d building above the rock’, and this became the pavilion that stands today.

As work continued to complete this folly, the Duke, or rather the architect Robert Adam, went back to the drawing board and in 1783-84 a series of magnificent designs for a greatly extended symmetrical range ‘proposed to be erected upon the top of a Rock near Alnwick Castle’ were executed. A number are in the Sir John Soane museum, and at Alnwick there are wonderful highly-finished designs for a range in a castellated style (below) and an alternative in an ecclesiastical manner.

But these grand plans were never executed. At Alnwick there is a drawing of Ratcheugh by John Lambert which is annotated with the words ‘drawn from Mr Bell’s original design’. John Bell was the Duke’s mason and builder, and had accompanied the late Duchess on tour, sketching the buildings she admired. This wording suggests that it was Bell’s design that was under construction in 1782, and complete by 1784 when Adam noted on one of his plans (above) that ‘the part shaded light already executed by the Duke’.

The Duke had a new drive laid to the crag to enable visitors to arrive in comfort, and in 1785 the Duke took a guest to admire the ‘building imitating the Ruins of an Old Castle’. The upper room was glazed on all sides, and from it Alnwick could ‘be viewed to great advantage’. The panorama also took in the Cheviot Hills and the North Sea.

The Duke died in 1786 and early the next century his son added an extension to the the ruin (not illustrated) to provide a home for the Keeper, which became known as Crag Cottage. The 1844 tithe map calls the hilltop folly the ‘Ratcheugh Tower’ and by the time of the first Ordnance Survey map of 1867 (surveyed 1861-4) it is marked as ‘Observatory’. The surveyors noted it as a ‘Mock Ruin of which the Observatory forms the Apex’, adding perceptively that it had been ‘erected about a century ago to add to the effect of the naturally beautiful landscape’.

The Crag was celebrated in a very curious poem by John Scafe, an Alnwick-based poet and geologist. In 1820 he combined his interests to write King Coal’s Levee, or Geological etiquette, a versified study of stone, which Goethe described as containing ‘all the knowledge of Geology a man wants’.

Thence to Ratcheugh Crag he pac’d:
– A little wilderness of taste
Dropt on the fertile lands,
And still, by ducal visits graced,
The hoary summit stands.

Northumberland Estates has restored the building, and it continues to be used by the Percy family. There is no public access, but there are occasional open days for local charities, and Ratcheugh Crag and its folly can be admired from public rights of way and the road.

For some stunning drone photos of the observatory, and a short film, visit https://fabulousnorth.com/place/view/ratcheugh-observatory/

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Starlight Castle is a folly on the grand Seaton Delaval estate close to the Northumberland coast. Today only a small section of wall survives, and historic photographs and postcards show it already in ruins a century ago. It was probably built by Sir Francis Delaval (1727-1771) in the middle of the 18th century. The story goes that Delaval wagered he could build a castle overnight, and this was the result.

Sir Francis supposedly won his wager, and hence the building was named Starlight Castle. He was  known as a practical joker and remembered as ‘the very soul of frolic and amusement’. There are tales of guests being tipped from their beds into cold baths, or exposed in undress when walls turned out to be curtains. With gentler humour he kept a ‘flock’ of carved stone sheep in front of the mansion which a visitor in 1752 said ‘would deceive anybody til very near’. So such a bet seems perfectly in character – but that so substantial a structure could have been constructed by moonlight seems most unlikely, and the story looks a bit shaky when it transpires that 18th century accounts refer to ‘Starling Castle’ (1774) or ‘Sterling Castle’ (1791).

An 1811 account noting the ‘Seaton Delaval Summer House’, probably refers to the sham castle. It stands on high ground in the picturesque Holywell Dene (dene being the local name for the deep wooded valley of a stream – in this case the Seaton Burn, burn being the Northumberland name for a stream). Built as a destination for picnics, it commanded extensive views out to sea, and would have been a pretty diversion on a drive around the mansion’s pleasure grounds, which also included a prominent obelisk and a grand mausoleum, both of which survive today, the latter in a poor condition.

The view would also have included the industrial-picturesque scene of the Delaval bottle-works by the bustling port. The Delaval family controlled the harbour at Seaton Sluice, a natural inlet which was developed to allow access for the large boats which transported the coal mined on the Seaton Delaval estate. The latest science and technology used by the Delaval family to control the water in the harbour, as well as their coal and glass industries, made the area an attraction for enlightenment tourists (sadly none of them seem to have left an account of the little castle). The folly would have provided great views of boats approaching the harbour, and of the myriad ships heading for the mouth of the Tyne, just a few miles south. It would also have acted as an eye-catcher from the harbour, framed by the steep banks of the Holywell Dene.

By 1841 it was a dwelling house and is named in the census as ‘Starling Castle’. A decade later the census records yet another variant spelling as ‘Stirling Castle’ and this is how it is marked on the first Ordnance Survey maps surveyed from 1858. The OS surveyors working on that map described it as a cottage with ‘parapets’ on the east, west and north sides which gave it a ‘castellated appearance’. They were told the tale of the wager, and carefully noted it in their account of the building.

Throughout the 19th century the Delaval family allowed public access to Holywell Dene (apart from occasional closures in protest at vandalism), and it was a much visited tourist attraction. In 1867 Mr Robert Lowrey of nearby Earsdon took an advert in the local paper to announce his fine line in refreshments (PIC-NICS! TEAS!! PIC-NICS!!! shouted the headline) for visitors to beauty spots such as ‘Starling Castle’, and when a new railway station was proposed for Holywell Dene in 1908, it was noted that it would make it easy to walk to the folly ‘with its romantic traditions’.

By 1925 the folly was described as being ‘completely in ruins’. The two front towers were still standing to their full height, but that on the right had separated from the central block, and had an alarming lean that suggested its days were numbered. As the images here show, that was indeed the case, and only a consolidated fragment survives today. Until fairly recently the vegetation around the folly was kept low and it was possible to appreciate the view to Seaton Sluice harbour, but today the remains are engulfed in trees in the growing season.

There is a popular public footpath though Holywell Dene from Seaton Sluice harbour. Seaton Delaval Hall and grounds are in the care of the National Trust and are currently undergoing major renovations. You won’t get thrown out of bed, but you can still find the stone sheep. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/seaton-delaval-hall

Update: This charming watercolour, looking along the burn to the folly, was one of a number of views of Holywell Dene and Seaton Sluice sold at Anderson and Garland salerooms in Newcastle in December 2025.

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